Page 73 of Dominion

Was it at Dylan for leaving us or was it at myself for not seeing the signs?

I knew he wasn’t okay, but I should have seen that he was planning something like this. But I was far too consumed by my own shit that I failed to see it. I thought I knew him, but it turns out that you could never know what the other person was thinking. I thought we went through the worst so far and all we had to do was to push through this last ordeal, but he decided that it wasn’t worth it.

That we weren’t worth it.

I was tired of myself, of my own mind, and all these thoughts on repeat.

I was tired of hating him one second and then missing him in the other. I knew that Ash missed him as well. He thought I wouldn’t notice the longing in his eyes every morning we woke up and the way he looked at the side of the bed where Dylan used to sleep. He thought I wouldn’t want to know because he saw me as too fragile after the last couple of weeks.

God, I was sick of myself.

“Fuck!” I threw my phone to the other side of the bed, thankful it landed face down, and started staring at the window that overlooked the street. I willed for their cars to pull in, so that I could run down and make sure that they were okay.

I didn’t want to call Ash. I didn’t want to worry him, but something clawed at my insides, filling my veins with fear. With each new minute, each passing hour, I was worried that they wouldn’t be coming home at all. My eyes dragged over the white sheets on the bed and our clothes haphazardly thrown around the room.

Dylan’s T-Shirt still stayed on the chair in the corner, neither Ash nor I capable of removing it. I had a feeling that if I removed it, if I erased all the traces of him ever being here, then it would truly be over. Then I would have to accept that he wasn’t coming back.

I wanted him to fucking come back so that I could yell at him and tell him what a fucking idiotic decision he had made. I wanted to tell him how much he screwed up, how much he hurt us, and how much I wanted to kill him for doing that.

But I also wanted to hug him, to feel his lips on mine, and to inhale that fresh scent of his that always reminded me of rain and green forests at the beginning of spring, when everything was coming alive. I wanted him to call me his Little One, even if it was just one last time.

I wanted to tell him how much I needed him in my life; how important he was. Ash was my night and Dylan my day. These past couple of weeks felt as if the part of my very soul was torn away, leaving me incomplete.

My eyes welled with tears again, and as much as I hated them, I appreciated having them. I was still capable of feeling, capable of expressing my emotions. I wasn’t apathetic, filled with numbness with no real need to move from one spot.

I welcomed the pain like an old friend instead of trying to outrun it, because we both knew I never could. I could hide behind trained smiles and pretty lies, but I couldn’t run away from what was happening inside my head.

Getting up from the bed, I walked toward the chair and the fucking shirt I didn’t dare touch since we came back. My trembling hand reached out, my forefinger falling on the collar and slowly going over the seams, while I bit back the sob threatening to erupt from my chest.

I let the tears flow.

I let myself sit down, taking the shirt into my lap, allowing my tears to wash away to sadness I couldn’t escape. I allowed myself to miss him, to grieve over the things we had lost, and most of all, I allowed myself to love him.

“I want you to come back,” I sobbed, burying my face into the material that still smelled like him. “I want you here with us. I fucking miss you, Dylan.”

I hoped that on some level he still knew that he could always come back. I hoped that he knew he would always have a home with us, because he and Ash were my home. It wasn’t a place, it wasn’t a building with fucking walls—it was the two of them.

I had no idea how long I sat there, or how long my tears fell down my cheeks, but the dawn breaking through the window told me it was longer than I thought. My back screamed when I tried to get up, my tears dried on my face, and a bone-deep fatigue had slowly settled in me.

I didn’t want to move to the bed. I didn’t want to think about the things that would happen or worry about Ash and Dylan.

I prayed for a day, just one day, when my brain would stop talking. When my mind wouldn’t try to break my heart with the careless thoughts it kept pushing forward.

But waiting for Ash to call was worse than wishing for Dylan to come back, and I knew I had to move myself, to do something.I knew sleep wouldn’t come, no matter what I did, so I stood up, leaving the shirt where it was before, only lingering for a few seconds with my eyes tracing the white material.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed the book we brought back from the Red Manor. The book one of the first Red Maidens wrote, her diary, and I knew what I was going to do.

I didn’t have enough time to go through everything, and I knew I wasn’t in a good enough mental space to actually read it. While her destiny was nothing like mine, she too was thrown into an unknown world, facing things she didn’t have to face before.

We needed to know more about the Order. I needed to know more about the Dominion.

I trusted that Casimir had my best intentions in mind, but I didn’t trust the rest of his organization. So, I would learn anything I needed to in order to have the upper hand for the first time in my life.

25

ASH

I read somewhere,a long time ago, that our brain often blocks out the traumatizing aspects of our lives, to protect us from experiencing it over and over again. So, instead of having us remember it, it would create black holes in our memories, making it almost impossible to remember bits and pieces of our childhoods and our adult lives.

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